HUD chief doubts New Orleans will be as black

POPULATION SHIFTNew Orleans' racial makeup up in airSome black areas may not be rebuilt, HUD chief says

LORI RODRIGUEZ and ZEKE MINAYA, Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Published
5:30 am CDT, Thursday, September 29, 2005

It will be years before New Orleans regains the half-million population it had before Hurricane Katrina, and the population might never again be predominantly black, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson said Wednesday during a visit to Houston.

"Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time," he said. "New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again."

He said he isn't sure that the Ninth Ward, a predominantly black and poor neighborhood devastated by flooding, should be rebuilt at all. If it is, the new construction should be designed to withstand disaster, he said.

In a meeting with the Houston Chronicle editorial board, the housing secretary, who is black, also criticized the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other black leaders, saying they were stirring up racial animosity in their comments about Katrina.

"I wish that the so-called black leadership would stop running around this country, like Jesse and the rest of them, making this a racial issue," the HUD chief said.

That remark, as well as the skepticism about rebuilding the Ninth Ward, drew sharp responses from Jesse Jackson.

Interviewed by the Chronicle on his way to Detroit to visit Katrina evacuees, the civil rights leader said that the racial dimension of the New Orleans crisis is not something he introduced.

The news coverage of the evacuation and relief efforts made it clear that a great many of those affected were black, poor and unable to leave on their own, he said.

"Those are the images that were burned into the consciousness of the world and became so embarrassing," he said.

The decision on whether to rebuild the Ninth Ward should be left to the former residents of the ruined neighborhood, he added, saying "People have the human right to return home."

Alphonso Jackson predicted New Orleans will slowly draw back as many as 375,000 people, but that only 35 to 40 percent of the post-Katrina population would be black.

Jackson said that's because the worst-hit areas were low-income black neighborhoods that may never fully be repopulated.

Prior to Katrina, the population was 67 percent black and 28 percent white.

"I'm telling you, as HUD secretary and having been a developer and a planner, that's how its going to be," he said.

Jackson said he has been asked by President Bush to help New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin rebuild the city. His advice to Nagin during a meeting Friday: Build higher, sturdier and more water-resistant housing.

"I told him I think it would be a mistake to rebuild the Ninth Ward," he said. "I said I'm not sure what we do with it, or if we decide to build in the Ninth Ward we have to look at different ways of building."

One such possibility would be devoting the lowest parts of all structures to parking garages rather than residences.